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Strike Temperature

motrek

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I've had BS for almost two years now, and I finally had time to fire up the brewery.
I attempted one of my tried and true recipes, an AG APA.
This was a 5 Gal.batch and BS calculated that I needed to infuse (single, no MO)
with 10.63 qts. water at 163.7F. to reach 152F mash temp. Grain bill of 8.5 lbs.
I was barely able to get to 140F.

Mash tun is Coleman 34 qt. cooler for which I entered a thermal mass of 0.3.
Note that this is what I had in the old ProMash and it calculated a dough-in temp. of 172F.

Grain and tun were at about 70F and thermometer was calibrated.

So far as I know, I've set all my parameters up correctly, but have I missed something?
Any thoughts?
 
I put the thermal mass to zero and pour my strike water into my mash tun first.  I put it in at about 6F above my calculated strike temperature.  I then let it cool to my strike temp and then dough in my grains.  As long as I have a good temperature reading on my grains, I hit my mash in temp everytime!  I basically take the thermal mass of the mash tun out of the equation by going in hot and waiting for it to cool to strike temp.
 
Thanks, Scott.  I figured it out.  Once I checked the "Adjust Temp for Equip" I got a more reasonable
170.4 strike temp!
 
That's great advice Scott... this is the one thing I've found that BS seems to be off on for my initial setup (I'm just about at 5 AG batches using BS, getting ready to start making tweaks).
 
jtoots said:
That's great advice Scott... this is the one thing I've found that BS seems to be off on for my initial setup (I'm just about at 5 AG batches using BS, getting ready to start making tweaks).

I don't think BS is actually off.  I think it's more a matter of us not understanding our own system well enough to make that part of the tool work.

What I do know, for my system is that I don't understand the thermal mass of my mash tuns (yes, I said tuns) very well.  I have two 48 quart mash tuns and the thermal mass of each is different, even though they are very similar.  They're both Coleman coolers.

I used to use a lazer temp gun to get my grain temp and it wasn't as accurate as putting my temp probe down into the grain itself.  That helped me get a lot closer. 

As an example, when I know my grain temp and have my BS mash profile set up to ignore my mash tun thermal mass, I can get really close to my mash in temp (+ or - .5F) by putting my mash water in 7F hotter than my strike temp and stirring for about 3 minutes until it drops.  It's usually about 2F high of mash in temp after the cooler pulls some heat out of it.  So, I lose about 5F with the mash tun I use the most.  With the other one, I have to go in about 9F hotter, to get within about 2F high.

If I were in a production environment where time is money, I'd worry about it more.  However, it's only a few extra minutes for my brew day to hit my mash in dead on every time, which is why I do it that way.
 
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